Nickname “uncle Vanya”: Security Service of Ukraine detains officer-defector, who joined terrorists during captivity and went to Russia for getting instructions

SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) detained former chief intelligence officer of one of the army corps, who after captivity defected to terrorists. The deputy head of the SBU Chief Investigative Directorate Vitalii Mayakov and the SBU Chief of Staff Oleksandr Tkachuk informed about this during the briefing.

“The Service has indisputable proofs (testimony of witnesses and technical operations data) that the defector cooperated with intelligence organizations of militants, which are under Russian special services control and actually held one of leading positions there”, - Mayakov underlined.

In particular, testimony of intelligence officers of the 8-th Army Corps of the Land Forces of Ukrainian AF, servicemen of the 30-th Separate Infantry Brigade, officials of the “Right Sector” Volunteer Ukrainian Corps, who while being in captivity witnessed the cooperation of the defector with the DNR terrorists and the RF special services were collected.

He was taken captive in August 2014 in the process of negotiations concerning probable exchange of wounded and bodies of fallen. Shortly thereafter, the defector assented to a proposal of cooperation from a career officer of Russian secret services. Among his duties was the collection, processing and integration of information about the ATO forces.

“The defector obtained military uniform of Russian model, service weapon, service ID card, salary and a staff car”, - Oleksandr Tkachuk noticed. He added that the former Ukrainian officer went to Russian Federation, including Rostov-on-Don, on several occasions for getting instructions from career officers of Russian secret services.

He went by nicknames “luiz”, “uncle Vanya”, “colonel”, “Ivan Nikolaevich” among his colleagues-terrorists.